Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Results tagged ‘ Erick Aybar ’

On the morning of June 14, 2010, we woke up in our KOA camping cabin in Chula Vista, California. We had a night game on tap in Anaheim and only a two hour drive. So we had some time to kill and we had two plans — Hollywood and lunch with my cousin.

We left the San Diego area early and headed straight to Hollywood for a little sight seeing. We parked in a parking garage connected to the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and then we hit the street on foot:

Top Left – the very first star we saw on the walk of fame was the Los Angeles Dodgers, which was fitting for our trip.

Top Right – we walked the sidewalk a bit and took some pictures with people of interest, like Matt Damon, Bruce Lee, and Kermit the Frog.

Bottom Left – right at the entrance to the street, there was a Mariners Mickey Mouse, which was also fitting for our trip. I guess for the All-Star game there are Mickeys all over the city, one for each MLB team. Later in the day, we found the Angels Mickey in front of the Big A.

As we walked down the street, we came to a big tent where Top Chef was putting on shows. They had some games you could do on the sidewalk including a little putting green. On Tim’s first “putt,” he took a near full hack…

…and hit the bright orange golf ball across Hollywood Boulevard. The camera man’s face in the middle picture is an instant classic. The funniest thing to me is that the camera man stopped filming as he made the shocked face. The arrow in the picture to the right is pointing to the ball resting on the other side of the street. Luckily, the ball weaved between several cars going both directions on its journey across the street.

After a short visit in Hollywood, we hit the road again and drove down to Huntington Beach…

…where we met my cousin Molly and her husband Eric for lunch at Ruby’s at the very end of the pier. If you click on that beach panorama, Ruby’s is the red roof at the far left.

While we waited for Molly and Eric to arrive, we watched surfers. This old school surfer on the left…

…made Tim’s day when he waved at him as he paddled by. Baseball player, surfer, fireman, truck driver, Tim loves it when people out in the world wave at him. Tim loved watching the surfers. He was also amazed when a father and son fishing on the peir caught a little baby shark. We watched them unhook it and then throw it back into the water.

After lunch, we hit the beach for just a little bit of running around and splashing:

In the top left picture, Tim is making one of many tiny little “sand castles” — which really were just mounds of wet sand. The waves kept washing away his castles. In the top right, that is Molly standing between me and Tim. She went to high school about a mile from this beach — looks like a tough life, eh?

After lunch and beach time, we headed to our hotel in Anaheim. After a little relaxing (and a little running for me), we hit the road for a mile-and-a-half drive to Angel Stadium of Anaheim. This was the view as we pulled into the parking lot…

…parking was only $8.

We got a shot of Tim standing on a big baseball as we approached the entrance…

…at the right side of that picture, the Angels Mickey Mouse is behind the guy in the green t-shirt.

The highlights of the entrance are a bunch of huge wood baseball bats…

…and two huge Angels caps. The hats were complete with New Era and size tags on the inside. By the way, these hats are size 649 1/2.

Once we headed into the stadium, we spent most of Angels’ BP hanging out behind the bullpens in right field. Here was the view from section 258:

We headed to this section for three reasons: (i) the sections behind the dugouts were almost empty, (ii) there was very little chance that any homeruns would come flying in there hot and take out little Tim, and (iii) Joel Piniero was out in LF (in the field just above the home plate in the bullpen) and I hoped he might want to hook us up with a baseball like he had for my dad several days before in Oakland.

Joel never looked out toward us. However, at one point, a homerun came right toward us. It was going to bounce in the upper bullpen. As it bounced, it went out of our view and then…

…it hopped up directly into my glove. A clean catch on one hop. Tim was impressed with us. We got a ball without anyone throwing it to us. He asked me, “How’d you get that? No one threw it?”

He posed with the new acquisition right where we caught it:

Actually, we caught it just to the left of that little green fencing behind Tim.

After catching the baseball, we met up with my Dad in the seats by the LF foul pole. This was the view:

My Dad had already had enough of that section. He decided to head over to RF. I told him to hang out 20 rows deep once the Brewers started hitting so he could catch a Prince Fielder homerun.

After her took off, Tim and I watched this Angels pitcher…

…put on a “futbol” clinic with a baseball. The dude has some serious soccer skills.

Soon, Tim and I decided to do a little exploring. We headed out toward CF where we checked out the “Monster” sign in the “grass” in the big batters’ eye area. The “grass” is actually some sort of field turf. We also grabbed this panorama:

And, what the heck, we got another picture of Tim with his Angel Stadium baseball:

Next, we headed a few feet to our left and checked out the big “A” rock formation and waterfall in the batters’ eye:

Then it was on to RF. As you head from LF to RF, there is an open concourse that runs behind the seats in LF and behind the batters’ eye in CF. As the concourse reaches RCF, it goes under the RF seats and there are a series of big tunnels…

…that head out to the RF seats.

We headed to the last row in the deepest part of RCF where we checked out the batters’ eye from the other side. Its an odd batters’ eye with the fake grass, big rock formation and water falls, and then a big green deck-like area right next to and in front of the RF seats.

Here was the view of the field from up there:

Next, we swung around to foul territory in RF. This was the view from the back of section 231:

Oh, by the way, my Dad didn’t catch a homerun from Prince. He almost caught one from someone else, but he was robbed by another fan who was running wild out in the RF seats. Prince was blasting some bombs, deeeep bombs. My Dad did work his way down to the dugout area (which was generally closed off unless you had a ticket there) and got this picture of Prince hanging out down there:

Tim and I walked around the field level concourse next. Although there wasn’t anything particularly special about it, I liked the field level concourse at Angel Stadium. It was nice and open with a lot of head room above.

Here is a look down the front of the concourse looking from the RF corner toward home plate:

Down at the far end of that last picture, I took this panorama:

Some usher had let my Dad down to the dugout (commenting, “we always like out of towners”), but this was as close to the dugout as Tim and I could get.

As we made our way around home plate toward the 3B side, we found this wall…

…I’m not sure if there is more to the Angels Hall of Fame or if this is it. If there is more, we missed it. This is all that we saw.

Here is a look at the concourse looking from home plate out toward LF…

…note the nice picture of former Mariner Joel Piniero. Also noteworthy, there is a Ruby’s about half way down in that picture. That’s the same place where we ate lunch on the pier in Huntington Beach earlier in the day. My Dad doubled up on the day having Ruby’s for lunch and dinner.

Soon, we found ourselves back out by the LF foul pole:

Tim and I were hungry, so we headed to a nacho stand. After ordering our nachos, I realized that I couldn’t find my wallet. I was praying that I left it in the hotel and had not lost it somewhere in the stadium. After the game, I discovered that is exactly what had happened. Anyway, no nachos for us, at least not just yet.

Eventually, we made our way back to section 258 where we’d got the BP homerun. My Dad found us and we hung out there a bit. Before long, a guy named Warren (who you might see commenting here from time-to-time under the name “yankeehater626”) stopped by to say hello. Actually, he did more than that, he had a special gift for Tim. I’ll show you it a little later.

It was great meeting and chatting with Warren. (Hi, Warren!) Notably, we chatted about the fact that Warren had just caught a foul ball and a home run ball at the same game at the Oakland Colesium (the day before Game 1 of the GFS Roadtrip) and several commentators on ESPN had apparently taken the opportunity to wrongfully mock Warren on the air when he was shown on TV giving the foul ball away to a young fan. Warren explained the whole situation and all of the media hype following it. It was very interesting…maybe he can provide a link to the blog entries he wrote about it in the comments here.

After splitting up with Warren, Tim stayed with my Dad and I did a little more exploring. First, I headed up to the upper deck in LF where it looked a little bit like this:

…and I made my way around the upper deck taking a bunch of panoramas. Like this one…

…this one…

…this one…

…and this one too:

In the upper deck, the concourse is behind the seats and it is pretty narrow:

Heading back into the upper deck seating area, I noticed that the seats in the upper deck did not all look the same. Some of them (to the left) had an Angels logo (which is hard to see because it is just raised metal, no red or white paint or anything like that)…

…and some of them (right) had a weird yellow and white picture on them. You know what? On a hunch, I just typed in www.edison.com in my brower and confirmed that little picture is Edison International’s logo. According to Wikipedia, from 1998 to 2003, it was called Edison International Stadium of Anaheim.

I took the pictures of those seats as I climbed to the back row to take a picture over the back of the stadium of the big “A” out front:

The sun in RF was blinding. I could hardly see when I got this panorama from the top of the stadium…

…visibility was no better when I reached the end of the infield seats and got this panorama:

After taking that panorama, I turned to my right and got this picture…

…showing the side of the scoreboard and the concourse at the top of the RF seats. That concourse is above the concourse that I mentioned earlier that runs from LF to CF and then under the RF seats.

This next panorama was taken from that concourse behind the RF seats:

On my way back to our seats to meet up with Tim and my dad, I headed down into the RF seats and then into the concourse below the RF seats. At the opening of the concourse under the RF seats, I walked by Angelitos, which appeared to be a Mexican restaurant…

…and then behind a seating area where people were eating dinner behind the batters’ eye.

Finally, I made it back to our seats. We sat in LF in section 260. It was game time and this was our view:

I think this is the first time that Tim has ever had a “child” ticket. His seat in LF was only about $5.

Speaking of $$, I still had no wallet. So my Dad bought us those nachos we’d had our eyes on…

…huge and tasty chicken nachos, to be exact.

After the nachos, we headed to the concourse to grab some ice cream helmets. I couldn’t find ice cream for awhile and did a bunch of walking in the concourse. And I took this panorama from the concourse behind section 208:

Then, we got some bad news…

…Tim had to get a tasty, but personally disappointing, chocolate malt cup. That’s right — NO ICE CREAM HELMETS!!!

I had a discussion with two ladies at the concession stand trying to figure out the ice cream helmet situation. The first lady told me they used to have ice cream helmets, but now they only have rally monkey cups. She did not speak highly of the rally monkey cups. It did not matter, I was having no part of a rally monkey cup.

Here is the deal, I’d love to have an Angels ice cream helmet in our collection. An Angels helmet shows we attended a game in Anaheim. It doesn’t endorse the Angels. Its just memorabilia. But the rally monkey, he’s different. The sole purpose of the rally monkey is to support and encourage the Angels. We neither support nor encourage the Angels. In fact, I’d be happy if they went 0-162 each season.

Anyway, there was a game to be played. And, thankfully, the rally monkey would have to stay in his cage on this night.

The Angels got the scoring started in the second inning. Kevin Frandsen hit a double to RF that scored Howie Kendrick and Juan Rivera. And, that would conclude the scoring for the Angels on this night.

One thing that I really liked about Angel Stadium is pictured below…

…its the thin scoreboard right behind home plate. It was so nice not to have to scan down the LF or RF line looking for the count or number of outs. All of the information was right there in front of us as we watched the batters.

Now, bring on the Brewers.

The Brewers got the game winning runs in the top of the third inning. First, George Kottaras (whose career first homerun landed about 15 feet from us last season in Boston) hit an RBI double scoring Alcides Escobar. The Brewers then loaded up the bases so Ryan Braun could unload them with a grand slam, his 10th homerun of the season.

Speaking of Braun, he was stationed right in front of us in LF during the bottom half of each inning:

During the game, several Angels stood on the LF wall watching the game from the bullpen. I thought it was interesting that this guy…

…was standing on an unearthed pitcher’s rubber.

There were plenty of interesting sights around the ball park in addition to the game. Like at Dodger Stadium three days ago, there were beach balls bouncing all around the stadium. We caught a beach ball twice so Tim could hit them. He quite enjoyed that.

Each time Hideki Matsui came to the plate, a group of fans in RF held up cards spelling out…

…M-A-T-S-U-I-L-A-N-D. I’m guessing this was some sort of reference to the fact that Disneyland is right down the road.

In CF, there is a row of trees popping up above the fence. From our seats, I noticed that the trees are not planted in the ground…

…they are in big box-looking things.

After Braun’s grand slam, the score stayed at 5-2 until the top of the sixth inning. In the sixth, the Brew Crew tacked on an extra run on a unique play. Casey McGehee hit a deep fly ball to the warning track in CF. If left untouched, it would have hit the wall right in front of those big potted trees. However, nine time gold glove winner Torii Hunter raced over and jumped to make a spectacular catch, but the ball would not cooperate. The ball hit the pocket of Hunter’s glove, rattled around, and popped out and over the fence for a solo home run.

Torii Hunter couldn’t believe it. Neither could the rest of us. You can check out the play HERE.

The Angels were trailing 6-2. So Tim was happy:

I kept watching for Prince Fielder to blast a mammoth shot….

…but he never did. In fact, he went 0-4 on the day.

Throughout the game, this guy (who, I guess, might have been the soccer playing pitcher from above)…

…kept walking to the bathroom and then standing at the top of those stairs while a bunch of little kids screamed at him for baseballs. Eventually, he walked over and handed out a couple balls — two to little kids and one to an allegedly cute girl, I believe.

Angels Stadium has two big screens. One of them was behind us. The bigger big screen was in RF and looked like this:

Tim is a goofy kid with an active imagination. So at some point, he thought it would be fun to stand around…

…balancing his hat on his shoe.

Above, I mentioned that Warren brought Tim a special gift. Here it is:

I just mentioned in the entry for our first game in San Diego that I don’t like it when fans try to give baseballs to Tim at games. This is the exception. From reading our blog, Warrent knew we are huge Ken Griffey, Jr. fans. So he gave Tim this baseball that Griffey hit for a homerun during BP the last time he was in Anaheim, which was shortly before retired. I set up this picture like this because Warren mentioned that he caught the ball in RCF, just above where Tim is holding the ball in this picture.

A huge, Thank you, Warren!

This ball is now sitting in a case in a special spot in Tim’s room.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, I wanted to head back up to the upper deck in RF. I wanted to take some more pictures because the sun was so bright out there before the game. My dad wanted to check it out up there too, so we all headed toward RF.

On the way, I took this shot from the upper concourse behind the RF seats:

Tim was still acting goofy when we reached the upper deck…

…and the view was much better up there with the sun down:

The seventh inning was another big inning for the Brewers. First, they scored two runs on a double by Corey Hart. Hart later scored on a single by Ryan Braun.

Casey McGehee was hit by a pitch after Braun’s single. McGehee was on first when Carlos Gomez grounded into a potential double play. But McGehee prevented the double play by taking out Angels short stop Erik Aybar, and I mean he took him out. Out of this game, and out of about the next 9 games as well.

Everyone rushed to Aybar to check on him…

…well, everyone but Angels leftfielder Juan Rivera. Eventually, Rivera noticed he was the only Angel fielder who had not gathered around Aybar. He walked reeeeealllly slowly toward the infield and finally joined the rest of his team before the trainers helped Aybar off of the field.

A little later, we noticed something in the sky behind 3B…

…it was nightly celebration at near by Disneyland.

We decided to walk around to the 3B side to see if we could get a better view of the fireworks. We ended up watching the end of the game from right here…

…this was our excellent view:

The Angels still couldn’t get anything going. Here is Hideki Matsui…

…striking out to end the 8th.

For good measure, the Brewers added a twelfth and final run in the top of the 9th inning on a bases loaded ground out b Alcides Escobar.

And that was it. Final score 12-2 Brewers.

An usher took our picture before we headed back to the hotel:

By the way, at no point during this Angels home game were we ever in Los Angeles. Not the City of Los Angeles. Not the County of Los Angeles. Los Angeles was nowhere in sight at this California Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California home game.

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